Guest Editorial

BY aL BENSON JR.
| JANUARY 11, 2012

Major function for teacher union is to socialize students

Public education has become Socialists' primary instrument to promote Socialism.

The National Education Association (NEA) meets every year for a big national convention and teachers from all over the country show up for this event.

An agenda is usually presented showing all the things nationally that the NEA is either for or against. Many of the issues they choose to address have little or nothing to do with education, but everything to do with their leftist worldview.

While many have heard of the NEA, they don't have any idea of how
long it has been around or what it really does, only that many of their
kids' teachers belong to it. The compliant media, when it reports on NEA
conventions, is not about to give out any more real information than it
has to. In all fairness to public school teachers, there are some that are not in favor of what this "teachers union" does, but their opposition
is generally ignored or ridiculed.

Samuel Blumenfeld in his informative book "NEA, Trojan Horse in
American Education" has given us a view of the NEA that is seldom
presented in other places.

Blumenfeld noted on page 13 of his book that it was in 1829 that
Josiah Holbrook launched the Lyceum movement to organize the educators of
America into a powerful lobby for public education. And if the
socialists decided to further their cause through the instrument of
public education, we can then understand why the system has had such a
pro-socialist bias for as long as anyone can remember. Indeed, public
education was to become the socialists' primary instrument for promoting
socialism."

Also in 1829, radical socialist and feminist Frances Wright lectured
in this country. She spoke in favor of a national system of education --
and who was to be the beneficiary of that system? The students? Hardly!
In speaking of public education, Ms. Wright said quite forthrightly "That
measure is national, rational, republican education, free for all at the
expense of all; conducted under the guardianship of the state, at the
expense of the state, for the honor, the happiness, the virtue, the
salvation of the state."

That's quite a mouthful of socialist dogma. Karl Marx would have
loved it. Maybe he did. Frances Wright, after all, was a little ahead
of him in promoting "Free education for all children in public schools."
Remember now, we are talking about events that happened in 1829 -- not
1929, but 1829 -- a mere forty-two years after the Constitutional
Convention in Philadelphia.

Blumenfeld has informed us that: "The NEA was founded in 1857 at a
meeting in Philadelphia called by the presidents of ten state teachers
associations."

Thomas W. Valentine, president of the New York Teachers Association,
told the gathering, "I trust the time will come when our government will
have its educational department, just as it now has one for agriculture,
for the interior, for the navy, etc."

Blumenfeld continued: "Thus it should come as no surprise that the
call for a federal department of education was made at the very first
organizational meeting." The socialists didn't get what they wanted
right away, but they never quit working toward it and planning for it.
Jimmy Carter finally gave it to them during his one-term presidency
in the late 1970s as a payback for teacher union support during his
election. Ronald Reagan claimed he wanted to disband it, but, somehow,
he never quite got around to it.

Trouble is, the Constitution, as flawed as it is, gave the federal
government absolutely NO role to play in education in this country, so
the feds just usurped the power and did it anyway. Few people dared to
complain. After all, it was "for the kids" right? Well, not exactly.
Originally the organization was called the National Teachers
Association but, according to Blumenfeld, in 1870 the name was changed to
the National Education Association and membership was opened to include"any person in any way connected with the work of education."

Shortly, the NEA became the "forum" where all the educational issues
of the day were dealt with such as public vs.private education, the role
of government in education, religious educations vs. secular (humanist)
education and others. And Blumenfeld has noted that these problems
remain with us even today "just as insoluble now as they were then."

As you dig further into the socialist origins of both the public
school system and the National Education Association, you learn more and
more about the socialist direction public education has always taken in
this country -- if you are willing to look.

Many of you have heard of John Dewey, one of the giants of public
education in the 20th century. His name is to 20th century public
education what Horace Mann's name was to 19th century public education.
John Dewey was an atheist, a socialist, and just happened to belong to
fifteen different Marxist front organizations, as well as being a
co-author of the Humanist Manifesto. Dewey had an "interesting"
education philosophy which should give parents no comfort. He said: "You
can't make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to
think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society, which
is coming, where everyone is interdependent."

Look at what he said. With a statement like that do you wonder why the minions of both the NEA and the government school system hate homeschoolers so much? Most homeschoolers learn to think independently, at least to some degree. Therefore, they will ask questions; they will even question authority where they feel it is right to do so. So they won't fit easily into the socialist collective that public education and big government are planning for us. They will not go easily into the New World Order, but will question and resist -- therefore they must be suppressed at every opportunity that the "socialist collective" may
flourish.

Back in 1936 the NEA stated a position from which it has never
retreated. It said: "We stand for socializing the individual . . . The
major function of the school is the social orientation of the individual
. . . Education must operate according to a well-formulated social
policy."

Notice that this statement did not say that education was a major
function of the public school. because it never has been, but rather"social orientation." That statement alone should tell you what the
public school system is really all about, and folks, it ain't education!
Paul Haubner, an NEA specialist, has informed us that "The schools
cannot allow parents to influence the kinds of values-education their
children receive in school . . . that is what is wrong with those who say
there is a universal system of values. Our goals are incompatible with
theirs. We must change their values." Christian ideals are not in line
with what the schools have for an agenda and so must be put down in
whatever way possible.

I hope you have noticed that, through all of this, there is almost no
emphasis on real education, but every emphasis on changing the values of
the students away from what their parents have taught them.